Year in Apps: The Biggest Hits, Misses and Absolute Fails of 2012

There are millions of apps out there, and some of them are actually useful.

2012 was an especially busy year for developers, who churned out roughly eleventy-billion apps, including a few for Windows phones. We saw the rise and rise of Instagram, the short-lived Draw Something fad and the inauguration of presidential campaign apps.

We've already run down the essential apps — 413 essential apps, to be exact — and now, as the year winds down, we run down the most memorable. We're quite sure we've omitted something you feel incredibly passionate about, so let us know about it in the comments.

Just as people were letting up on that whole "Facebook will ruin Instagram" thing, the company let slip a damaging Terms of Service update. One section of the updated TOS outlined stated that Instagram has the right to sell its users' photos for advertisement. Moans morphed into uproar. The company argued the language of its new TOS was "confusing" and everything was A-OK, but that didn't keep users from deleting their accounts. It wasn't long before Instagram reverted to advertising guidelines detailed in terms of service published in October 2010.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Election Year Apps

The 2012 presidential election was the first to get its very own apps. President Barack Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney embraced the smartphone, although in completely different ways. The Obama campaign released an Obama for America app packed with election information, campaign news and grassroots organizational tools.

The Romney campaign took a different approach, releasing a single-purpose app called Mitt's VP to announce Romney's vice presidential candidate. (Who was that guy again?) In four years, the presidential election moved from Obama using text messages to announce his running mate in 2008 to a fully designed app with Twitter feed access, push notifications and all for Romney in 2012. It's just the start of politicians embracing the smartphone.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Amercia Fail

But with technology come political gaffes. Prior to releasing the Mitt's VP app, the Romney campaign attempted to rally supporters around a classic photo-sharing app called With Mitt. The problem: One photo template featured the words "A Better Amercia."

D'oh.

Of course, the app immediately sparked a new meme as people began posting silly photos behind the app's failed template.

God bless Amercia. And the internet.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Facebook Takes on Mobile

Sure, Facebook had a mobile app before 2012, but it wasn't until this year that the social networking juggernaut took its mobile presence at all seriously. Facebook launched its standalone Facebook Camera app to accompany Facebook Messenger. And you already knew the company spent roughly 64 boatloads of money to buy Instagram, proving Zuck and co. want to be serious players in the mobile space.

What's more, the notoriously slow Facebook mobile apps got a ground-up rework. Facebook doubled the speed of its iOS apps, and added more features to the main mobile experience. The company outlined that it would continue to update its mobile apps on a more frequent basis, so its users won't have to deal with a sluggish and mediocre experience when it comes to accessing Facebook through their phones.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The Year of Ridesharing

In 2012, it became incredibly easy to get a stranger to drive you around town. While Uber has been available for the last two years, it wasn't until this year that ridesharing became commonplace in cities like San Francisco, New York, Boston and more.

In June, SideCar began giving you access to rides around your city. And the now-infamous pink mustaches took to the road in August with the launch of Zimride's Lyft. Through a simple iPhone or Android app, people looking for rides can alert these companies' drivers — just your average people with a decent car and a clean driving record — to pick them up. To avoid breaking taxi laws, passengers pay suggested "donations" rather than fixed fees.

It didn't take long for ridesharing apps to draw heat. Just a couple of months after launch, the California Public Utilities Commission hit SideCar with a cease-and-desist letter claiming the service lacked the licenses to protect its passengers. Uber and Lyft were hit with similar orders in other states. Yet all of the services, and their apps, continue to operate as the companies work with the government to figure out what is and isn't legal when it comes to ridesharing.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Most Shafted Apps

Third-party Twitter clients got the shaft in August when Twitter changed its API. Twitter essentially blocked growth potential and limited capabilities to popular apps like Tweetbot, Twitterific and Echofon. Although the move makes total sense for Twitter, which wants people using its home-built apps, it was a huge loss for pretty much everyone.

The third-party Twitter apps filled in feature gaps that Twitter lacked. Now they're getting cut off in a big way. As Wired noted earlier this month, Twitter's API change was also one of year's biggest tech fails.

Photo: Peter McCollough/Wired

Biggest App Fad

For a couple of months there, you couldn't go anywhere without seeing someone on the corner, on the bus, in a coffee shop — hell, damn near anywhere — playing Omgpop's Draw Something. The social drawing app became the most addictive game of the year, bringing back memories of everyone's Pictionary adventures. The app was a ginormous hit, reaching 10 million downloads within the first two weeks.

Social gaming giant Zynga took notice and bought Omgpop for an estimated $200 million. By March, just over a month after Draw Something's release, the app touted 20.5 million daily users. It alone gave Zynga a 25 percent boost in daily active users.

But the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and it wasn't long before people were moving on at alarming rates. In the month after the Zynga acquisition, Draw Something lost 5 million users. The app continued to shed players until it was almost laughable that Windows Phone touted it had "popular games" like Draw Something on its platform in October.

Honorary Mention: Letterpress

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Stories in App Form

It remains to be seen whether app-only news sources and magazines succeed, but the space saw a lot of growth and some contraction in 2012. We saw the launch of news apps like The Magazine and Circa, but also the shuttering of The Daily. The three aimed to bring original content to an app-only experience, but the closure of The Daily — a monumental effort by News Corp — in December showed it isn't easy running a successful app-based news model.

Nonetheless, 2012 was a year of experimentation. The Magazine, from Instapaper's Marco Arment, attempts something different than the typical news app. For $2 a month, The Magazine offers up for original longform stories on a bi-weekly basis — eight total stories a month. Circa, on the other hand, aims to deliver quick and easily digestible news. Editors pull out facts and quotes and stats from stories and shape it into a short, concise story (with a link back to the original piece). And for on-the-go video news, former Huffington Post execs launched NowThisNews in November.

As we move into 2013 we'll likely see more mobile-first news and content sites to come.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Prettiest App

When it comes to beautiful apps, Paper takes the prize this year. The app by FiftyThree won worthy recognition with this year's Apple's design award. The app turns the iPad into a journaling tool much like, you guessed it, paper. It's not a full-blown graphics app. Rather, Paper gives you the basics to create a digital journal. You can draw, sketch, write and more, all through touch.

The app supports the iPad's Retina Display and offers various colors and pen options. The result is a seamless and natural experience that mimics physical journaling. For examples of what users have created using the Paper app, check out the site here.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Best Productivity Apps

Productivity apps aren't the sexiest, but they are definitely useful and we've got two you definitely want to check out. Flexibits' Fantastical was already a hit as a Mac app when the developer finally launched its iOS version. The app does much more than the built-in calendar app — its most powerful feature is the natural language recognition. Gone are the days of entering in dates, times and locations into specific boxes. Fantastical recognizes what you want to add to your calendar, and also supports dictation.

To-do list app Clear also stood out with its unique design, which resembled Windows Phone's style more than iOS. The app separates tasks in a colorful interface and uses touch gestures — like swiping an item to complete or pinching a list apart to add a new task — to manage all of your to do lists.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Google Maps Takes a Win

The launch of Apple's iOS 6 Maps wasn't just a fail for Apple, it was a big win for Google. People complained so much about Apple's homegrown Maps experience, that CEO Tim Cook issued an apology — something unheard of out of Cupertino. For months, once happy iPhone users longed for the days of iOS 5 Google-powered maps and eagerly waited for Google to release a standalone iOS Maps app. In the meantime, people even bookmarked Google Maps in Safari for a mobile web-based map offering.

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